Coral in Your Genes

Coral in your genes, according to Nature Science Update, 16 December 2003 and Nature vol 426, p744, 18 Dec 2004. Robert Saint of the Australian National University, and colleagues studied 1300 gene sequences from a coral named Acropora millepora and were surprised to find over 400 also occurred in humans. About 50 were found in humans but not in flies or worms. Some of the genes were similar to those involved in specialised vertebrate nervous system tissues that corals do not have. "The assumption was that coral would lack many of the genes found in higher animals," commented Robert Saint. Nature comments "This finding suggests that many genes thought to be vertebrate specific may in fact have much older origins, and have been lost during the evolution of the fly and worm."

Editorial Comment: Finding similar genes in corals and humans is actually good evidence for Biblical creation, which says that all living kinds were separately created by the God who knew what structures and functions each one needed. Therefore, if corals and humans need particular genes, they both have them; and if flies and worms don't need them they don't have them. There is no need to make up stories about genes evolving in the dim distant unseen past and then disappearing from some creatures, so they are unseen in the present. (Ref. coral, human, genes)